


Take Me Home, Country Road

by Write_like_an_American



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: .....Sorta, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anthropomorphic, Canonical Character Death, Gen, M/M, Major Character Death (kinda goes without saying), Meeting Death, Not A Fix-It, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Very Pratchett-inspired, Yondu Meets Death, but a happy ending, implied suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-18 21:47:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13109163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Write_like_an_American/pseuds/Write_like_an_American
Summary: TheQuadranthas flown. The Ravagers disperse. The lights from the funeral linger over cold grey ashes, and Yondu Udonta meets Death.





	Take Me Home, Country Road

She comes for all of us, in the end.

Her hands: knuckle bones yellow as embalming wraps. The desiccated hollows of her eye sockets. The cadaverous stretch of her grin.

She's a cosmopolitan gal - as well-travelled as the galaxy is wide, as fair as it is cruel. After all, death does not discriminate. No margins, no classes. No caste or creed, or any of those other boxes mortals impose upon themselves in their never-ending quest for war.

Death is a natural process. She is neither the cause nor the end result. She merely acts as the deliverance method, as her scythe shreds your essence to heat haze and you dissipate into the abyss.

However, she has been watching mortals for a long time. Long enough to learn something of them.

They are curious creatures: bright sparks, their emotions as fleeting as their lives. While she cannot do what so many beg of her and return itinerant spirits to their homes, she shows mercy where she can. Her kindness manifests in small ways, private ways, ways that do not impede her Function and Purpose (for those are as vital to Anthropomorphoids as the blood in your veins).

And so: the rule. No one is exempt. From youngest to oldest, genocidal fanatics to mothers still sweating from childbirth. When your time comes, all of you, every single one, gets one last question. Before your final dissolution, you have a chance – just one – to Ask.

Ask what? Well, that is of your own devising. It can be anything, on any subject under the galaxy's multitudinous suns.

Perhaps you wish to know the meaning of existence? Whether there is a world beyond? What your life could've been like, if you'd made a different decision, if you hadn't pulled the trigger, if you'd taken the left fork instead of the right one at that crossroads along the way?

Once the query has been posed, she glides towards you on skeletal feet. She rises on her toes – or crouches to reassure a trembling child, or tenderly bends to the infirm and the old. She cups your face and presses her lipless mouth to your ear, and in that moment, before your soul fades into oblivion, you know _._

* * *

 

“ASK,” she droned. Her voice attended every funeral from Rigel to the relics of settlements around Deepspace. It reverberated with the high-pitched ululations of the extinct K'hktong people and the jackal-like mourning-laughter of the Kree: sonorous as tolling bells, booming like the Horns of Ogord, hollow as the chock of canopic jars being placed one by one in a crypt.

Yondu studied the specter for an overlong moment. “How come ya got tits?”

Death had no eyelids; not for her was the stupefied blink. “EXCUSE ME?”

“I said, how come ya got tits? Ain'tchu all bone under there?”

“I AM A COMPOSITE ENTITY. THERE IS NO ‘UNDER THERE’. THE SHROUD IS AS MUCH A PART OF ME AS MY SKULL.”

Yondu folded his arms. “Ain’t that convincin’, is all. Look. I seen a lotta titties in my time. Some real freaky ones too – we’re talkin’ slug ladies with exo-skelly shit. But they just don’t come that perky on a lady of yer years – no offence.”

Death's grin remained inscrutable. Each tooth was a tombstone (not literally; that would be overkill). Dust clung, as if she’d recently been exhumed – but otherwise, her ivories looked far cleaner than Yondu's.

“NONE TAKEN.” 

Yondu nodded. “So  _either_ yer wearin' a padded bra under there, or whichever god made ya is one kinky jackass.”

Death studied her bosom. “I SUPPOSE,” she said, pulling at her shroud in the closest to self-consciousness a multi-millennia-old being got, “I AM SIMPLY DRAWN THAT WAY.”

Yondu dug a grubby finger in his grubbier earhole.

“’Scuse me?”

“DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT. YOU HAVE ASKED YOUR FINAL QUESTION. NOTHING MATTERS NOW.”

She'd heard it before, of course. She'd heard it all before, many times over. There was nothing new under the sun. So claimed the residents of uncontacted planets, whose horizons had yet to broaden beyond their own astral backyard. For juvenile races, they spoke with surprising wisdom. Death suffered each of mortality's concerns and paltry grievances again and again and again, a slideshow reel revolving on repeat.

But it'd been a long time – well over a century, in fact – since another squandered their question so impudently. A woman, that time. Death remembered her. She remembered them all – although, much like well-ripened cheeses, some mortals were more memorable than others.

This one was quite the catch.

“So yer bonin’ Thanos,” he said, sauntering to stand in front of her, feet planted wide. “’Scuse the pun. How’s that work? Like, whas in it for him? I mean, ya got a mouth an’ all, but I wouldn’t stick my todger in it if ya paid me – again, no offence.”

No fear. Rare indeed; it took Death a moment to formulate her reply.

“AGAIN,” she said, mandible bone wagging to mimic speech. “NONE TAKEN.”

She took no umbrage. It wasn't that she couldn't - she could be vexed, although few creatures beside Thanos were persistent enough to stoke her ire. More often, she found herself _perplexed_. Mortal priorities had no rule or reason. Some cared for their fortunes, although the afterlife didn't come with deposit boxes. Others cared for their family and those they’d left behind; still more cared only for themselves.

As for her current charge? Yondu tried to find an angle where light hit the backs of her eye sockets.

He’d be searching for a long time. Death’s eyes absorbed everything, from the guttering stars at galaxy’s edge to the whirling quasars at its core. The universe ground towards a far-off halt, cooling with each passing year – not that any mortal noticed. Several thousand millennia from now, Death would float in an extinguished starscape, darker than any sighted creature could comprehend. Then, at last, she'd find peace.

Who reaped Death? That was the one question she couldn't answer. She looked forwards to finding out.

“YOU ARE AMUSING,” she told Yondu, because it was true. “WOULD YOU LIKE ANOTHER QUESTION?”

He opened his mouth. An upraised skeletal finger pre-empted him.

“I DO NOT HAVE A VAGINA.”

“Lucky. Ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.” Yondu's soul vacillated, back and forth and back again. Most mortals wore a thousand faces. They donned a new one for each emotion that flitted across the squishy wet sacks of their brains. Yondu had surprisingly few. His wobbly blue form, projected from his own self-image, glitched between a trio of states.

The first was a pirate, considerably taller, broader, and more swashbuckly than Udonta had been in life. His prosthetic rose high above his scar-trellised scalp.

The second – smaller, older, with a weathered and wearied expression – had shattered crystal wedged in his skull. Molten quartz stuck to the creases on his forehead.

The third was a toddler, no more than two. He crouched before Death, naked and filthy, cringing where the first stood tall and the second slumped in defeat. Of all of them, his crest was tallest: standing a half-foot from his vertebrae at its tallest point, marred only by the hole tunnelled through it by the collar.

“I s’pose I should ask after Quill,” he mused. The pirate king rubbed his lip, as did the old man and the infant: one smirking, one wrinkled, one bruised. Then he shook his head. His height fluctuated, high-middle-low and back again in a one-man wave, like a spectator at one of those asinine Terran games involving chasing balls and cheering. “Kid’d be pissed if he found out I was checkin’ up on him. Kraglin Obfonteri then. Show me my mutineerin’ shit of a mate.”

 _Kraglin Obfonteri._ He spoke that name with a flatness that indicated practice. But Death didn’t listen to the vibrations in the air. It would be pointless anyway, as there was very little oxygen to be found. Very little substance at all, for that matter, bar Yondu’s ashes, which hung in a dull grey cloud. They hardly did him justice.

Death nodded. Love – a mortal concept. “HE IS IN THE _QUADRANT'S_ AIRLOCK. HE WILL EXIT IT IN…” A brief pause, wherein she translated the linear passage of time for Yondu’s benefit. “FIVE MINUTES. GIVE OR TAKE.”

Yondu frowned; the pirate snarled, the old man sighed, the child scrunched its tiny chin in a way that predicted waterworks. “Which way?”

Technically, his question had been answered. But Death was nothing if not thorough. “OUTWARDS,” she said, with patience. A skim of thoughts; a tangle of grief and desolation. “HE DOES NOT INTEND TO RETURN.”

Yondu sighed: a long and noisy gust, a touch longer than if he still had lung capacity. “That _i_ _djit._ ”

Death offered no defence. She folded hands over her scythe, propping the gnarled rod on the nothingness below their feet. Metacarpals clicked against the metal. Her knuckles popped as if they pinched dried peas.

The scythe's whetted edge shone. It didn't glow, but it looked like it should. Mortal minds were more than capable of conjuring what wasn't actually there; Yondu saw a luster, like the shimmer of vacuum-resistant algae around thrusters.

She could snip his thread now. Cut the connection, sever this last vestige of a consciousness and set Yondu free. Would telling Yondu his partner survived make him happy? Potentially. But falsehoods didn’t feature in her Function.

Neither did granting the impossible. She couldn’t revive her clients. Could do nothing more than usher them onwards, and perhaps set their hearts at peace.

With all her experience, she pegged the nature of the spirits she ferried at a glance. While Yondu began as the intrepid sort – a man who launched himself into the unknown with a bright metallic grin – his confidence wavered. The pirate king stomped, snarled, was vanquished. The child curled small. All that remained was the old man, the sad man.

He stood, creased and stooped, wizened beyond his years. Fatigue weighed like shackles around his wrists. He had been cast out, abused, betrayed by those he loved. By Obfonteri himself in fact.

Death scrolled through Yondu’s life. No indignity was glossed over, no crime he’d committed disguised. She saw it all. The Kree, the whips, the shame, what they'd done to him, the pervasive itch of muck on his skin that no amount of showering removed. No wonder Yondu gave up on it.

Then salvation. Short-lived, of course. Ego's children came and went, and the banishment after that. But a boy lit a taper in the depths of the gloom, and a young man stood besides him, cradling a match.

That match burned out all-too fast. A plasma bolt cleaved yaka-quartz, while Peter fled to the far side of the galaxy to escape him. Then a rodent with a metal spine swaggered into Yondu's life (Death wondered whether his soul qualified for passover procedures). A wet-eyed twig waved goodbye. Explosion. Space. Suffocation, tears crystallizing before they had the chance to fall.

The mortal coil crushed Yondu too long and too hard. And yet, now he had the chance, he seemed disinclined to shuffle off it.

Death tapped her scythe. “TIME DOES NOT WORK HERE,” she said. “NOT AS YOU CONCEIVE IT. THE PAIN OF MAINTAINING YOUR BODILY FORM WILL ONLY INCREASE, THE LONGER YOU LINGER. ARE YOU SURE YOU WISH TO WAIT?”

The old man swallowed. Then, with an air of defiance, he sat.

He could be levitating upside down – if time had no real meaning, direction was a lost cause. But he didn’t let that stop him. He crossed his legs, veiny hands resting on his shins. He was wizened, shrunken as a walnut. His leathers hung off him. His skin looked papery, blue as duck eggs and delicate, as if a hard rub might slough it from whatever essence sparkled beneath.

And yet, lurking beneath the fragility... _Determination_. An intransigence so utter that Death had only encountered it a hundred times before.

“Don’t care how long it takes,” he said, through lips too chapped to whistle. “Don’t care how much it hurts neither. Someone’s followin’? Least ya can do’s wait for ‘em to catch up.”

**Author's Note:**

> **Something I wrote ages ago. Depression told me it wasn't good enough to publish, but fuck depression, I had fun writing it. Comments and Kudos are appreciated!**


End file.
